World record in hat making

Slouchy hat bonanza

I started off making a hat for a friend who was feeling the cold. He has a serious lack of hair and the onset of autumn was making his dome turn blue and we couldn’t have that now could we? So I found a nice easy crochet pattern and I shared it with you all a couple of blog posts back. Since I shared that pattern I have made 13 slouchy beanies and have decided that I enjoy making them so much I am going to keep doing it. If you live anywhere close to me or are an immediate family member you are not safe. My beanie fetish reminds me of this book from my childhood called “Caps for sale” penned by Esphyr Slobodkina where a hat salesman wears a lot of caps and they get stolen by monkeys and he has to work out how to get them back. Early problem solving 101 apparently.

By the time I get bored of making slouchy beanies, most of upper Launceston will be wearing them.

“Oh EARL!” You would think he would have learned by now to stay off the table. Unlikely apparently…sigh…

Autumn has finally decided to rock up and it would seem that as soon as El Nino decided to head north for the winter, the flood gates opened and we Northern Tasmanian’s couldn’t be happier with the week of rain that we have had. We lost our phone and internet for a few days to a tree falling over the line in Tuesday’s storms but we didn’t care because the rain that accompanied it more than made up for the inconvenience. Brunhilda is back at the fore of ambiance enhancement on Serendipity Farm and Bezial and Earl have taken up residence on either side of her wafting warmth and are currently fast asleep dreaming of chasing chickens and running in their sleep as I tap away here.

I went hunting for buttons at the thrift shop in Exeter yesterday and look at the gorgeousness that I got for $3. I gave my last button tin away oblivious to the delights that are “button” but consider me hoarding these beauties mercilessly.

Aren’t the pastel colours of these buttons scrumptious? Consider me hooked!

I have to admit that I am really enjoying TAFE this year. We are working through tutorials to learn our course content and that’s my perfect way to learn. It’s still hard to travel 100km a day to attend but our lecturer, who lives just around the corner from us, has to drive it as well so I should probably stop complaining. The neighbour behind Frank has decided to sell his house. We thought that we might have finally gotten to Frank and it might be him selling but when we got our internet back (on Friday) we found out otherwise. If you would like to be our neighbour and have a stray half a million dollars Australian to throw around feel free to buy the property and we will most generously allow you to cut down a few of the trees on our back block that limit the view.

Once we killed the rats we actually got a bit of a harvest this year. Here Earl has taken it upon himself to become a tomato inspector. Apparently this batch needs to be inspected.

Our topsy turvy weather has seen the plants confused. These raspberries are spring raspberries and really shouldn’t be producing fruit and we also had cherry blossoms on our cherry tree in autumn.

I don’t know whether Deak is clever or just crazy as Paxo still hasn’t picked him as being a rooster despite his regular plundering of wayfaring hens on the peripherals of the flock. Maybe Paxo figures he can’t deal with all of the hens and Deak is welcome to the stragglers. Whatever the reason, Deak is now a permanent fixture in the hen house as 2IC rooster.

Its funny how autumn hit and suddenly Steve has a cold and I am overcome by the desire to sit by the fire and read and crochet. I haven’t even looked at Sanctuary for over a fortnight now and I really should water the glasshouse (note to self “water the glasshouse!”) but it has been lovely to move indoors and take advantage of the blissfully cool and damp weather after such a long hot and dry season. I have been saving seeds like a squirrel hoarding nuts and will be attempting to grow as many of our own seedlings this coming season as I possibly can. I am doing a swap for some chilli seeds (slouchy beanies rock!) from a lovely lady called Debra in Hobart. She has some interesting varieties that I didn’t know you could get in Tasmania and has most generously offered to share them with me. Our new gardening system is just a whole lot of effort away from reality and chillies will grow well in our new garden beds.

I was recently given these figs by a very kind fig benefactor. I am too ashamed to tell you how quickly I ate them all but needless to say they are now only a distant fond memory.

This is one of the Tree Chilli (Capsicum pubescens) fruit. As you can see they were quite big and quite hot on the Scoville (chilli heat) scale as well. I am looking forward to growing some interesting varieties of chilli next growing season.

Steve taking an arty shot over the bird bath to the river beyond

I harvested a couple of large chillies from a small tree chilli (Capsicum pubescens) that has been growing in a pot. I got the seeds from a fruit a friend gave me before her tree chilli shuffled off due to frost. The seeds are black and I now have quite a few and will be growing them as swapsies at seed swaps as they are one kind of chilli that will take quite a bit of cold and they are perennial as well which makes them doubly as useful. They also grow to quite large shrubs and yield a decent crop of hot chillies that I am gleefully contemplating in future years to turn into gochujang and make me self sufficient in chilli powder.

Steve prior to me making him a slouchy beanie…

Steve gaming and wearing his slouchy beanie oblivious to me taking his photo. I think he looks like a pirate in his beanie. He doesn’t care what he looks like so long as his head is warm (and it is).

Autumn brings lots of fun on our dog walks. The boys love rustling around in the fallen leaves and the cooler weather is a lot more comfortable than racing between trees and trying to drag Bezial from the shade. The holly berries are out in the middle of the year in the southern hemisphere and I am tempted each year to freeze or dry some to be used at Christmas time when its hot outside and holly berries are long gone. I guess that’s why we Aussies celebrate Christmas in July, in a vain attempt to harness the feeling of a Northern Christmas. If it really caught on it would be another string in the marketer and advertising bow to make a grab for mid year cash when not much is going on aside from the odd financial end of year/stocktake sale. Best of luck marketers. You might need to get the hipsters on board to sell that one 😉

Holly in Australia bears fruit in autumn so our holly is a mid year thing, not for Christmas.

I am seriously contemplating drying some so that I can have them at Christmas time.

One of Steve’s dahlias actually flowered. He got the tubers (free) from the plant lady up the road as they reminded him of his grandad who used to grow dahlias.

Steve went through serious withdrawal over the few days that we were internet free. He couldn’t play his online game and took to twitching in the lounge room in the ad breaks whilst being forced to watch “normal”  TV. I, however, really enjoyed my time away and have decided to limit my time online to my early mornings. After 7am I am staying away unless I am looking something up. No more trawling Facebook and Pinterest for this little black duck. I accomplished so much in the 3 days we were offline that I realised how much we have become addicted to living online. I have plans for autumn and winter that involve getting seriously good at baking awesome bread and have some excellent tutorials to follow. Brunhilda is going to be my faithful sidekick and together we can joust at bread shaped windmills to our hearts content. Much like my slouchy beanie hats, anyone in the immediate vicinity is likely to be inundated by bread as soon as I throw myself into baking it.

Bezial and Earl frolicking in the autumn leaves

A miracle. Telstra gave US money. We finished our contract and changed contracts and were paid out. I am documenting this pay-out here for posterity 😉

I read a wonderful book by Neil Gaiman called “The Ocean at the End of the Lane”. I read it in a day and wished that it had lasted longer. It was delicious and I will be heading to TALIS to order more of his books from the library as soon as I finish this blog post. I took a couple of Stephen King books out yesterday and am wallowing in horror. As soon as I finish ordering the Neil Gaiman books from TALIS I will be sinking into a comfy chair and immersing myself in the sequel to The Shining – Doctor Sleep. I am truly enjoying reading fiction again. I read constantly as a child and can’t believe that I have allowed myself to drop reading from my daily repertoire. Consider it firmly back on the menu.

This is a house in Beaconsfield Tasmania. There isn’t anything special about this house that we saw on our early mornings walk this morning aside from we noticed the curtains were twitching as we walked past…

It would seem we were being observed.

Well the cuckoo shrikes are calling me to cut them some more cheese. They are joined by a bevy of blackbirds, a salon of sparrows, a whoosh of wrens and a couple of Currawongs who have returned to the fold for their biennial breeding event much to Earl’s disgust. He sees them as king sized freeloaders and takes every opportunity to remind them to “BUGGER OFF!”  in no uncertain terms. Life is never boring (or quiet) on Serendipity Farm. I hope you are all having a lovely week wherever you are and whatever weather you are having. Catch you all soon and till we meet again, I can be found feet up near the fire reading a book with a big mug of tea at any given time.

“Red sky in the morning, shepherds warning” and it certainly was. This was the sky last week just before the storm front went through that took out our phone and internet.

The start of Brunhilda’s return to the fold for 2016. A month later than last year but “better late than never” is what I say.